Dubai: A worker has been accused of molesting a six-year-old girl and her three-year-old brother while they were riding small bicycles at a shopping mall.
The Emirati brother and sister were accompanied by their parents to the mall in Al Aweer to visit a cycling shop when the 35-year-old Bangladeshi worker allegedly molested them in November.
The children’s father had left his kids with their mother and went to pray, according to records, when the Bangladeshi was spotted by a shopper behaving indecently with the girl and her brother.
When the father returned after the prayer, he was told that his wife and children had gone to the police office at the mall.
Shortly before, the mother had taken her children to the police office to report what had happened, according to records. A shopper had told the mother that he saw the worker groping her daughter and molesting her son.
After identifying the 35-year-old man through surveillance cameras at the mall, he was apprehended a few days later after a policeman spotted him and chased him in the mall.
Prosecutors accused the defendant of molesting the children and threatening to beat their eight-year-old sister if she told their parents that he had molested her brother and sister.
The Bangladeshi pleaded refuted the charges when he appeared before the Dubai Court of First Instance on Wednesday.
He contended before presiding judge Fahd Al Shamsi that he was in the mall and helped the children ride their bicycles but did not molest them.
A police sergeant testified to prosecutors that they identified the Bangladeshi through the surveillance cameras after the mother reported the incident.
“A few days after the incident, I spotted the suspect walking in the mall. I was in my police dress and when I summoned him, he ran away. I chased him and restrained him. Upon confronting him with the footage of him molesting the children, he admitted that he had touched them while they played on their bicycles,” the sergeant told the prosecutors.
The mother told the prosecutors that the cycling shop manager had given her children temporary bicycles to ride them in the mall until he inflated their bicycles’ tyres.
“While I was seated nearby, I heard someone shouting ‘who are the parents of those children?’ When I turned around, I recognised that the children were my daughter and son. I spotted the suspect beside my children … the man who had shouted told me that he spotted the suspect molesting my kids. Meanwhile, my daughter came to me crying and told me that the suspect had touched her indecently. The suspect walked into the crowd and disappeared … My husband was in the mosque at that time. I reported the matter to the police office in the mall,” she testified to prosecutors.
In his prosecution statement, the father confirmed his wife’s statement.
A ruling will be heard on January 29.
